


Love's Labours Won

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Deconstruction, F/M, Flogging, Happy Ending, Motherhood, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:25:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3700807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis lets Anne go. Aramis and Anne get their happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love's Labours Won

**Author's Note:**

> Wildly OOC as I gave Anne and Louis _some_ brains and made them think about the consequences and implications of the whole dubious paternity thing. And there are hints of the feudal mindset.
> 
> Don’t read if you believe in the Anne/Aramis romance, you won’t like it.

Louis was proud. He was capricious and impulsive; vain and easily swayed. But he was also a son of the House of Bourbon. Louis knew of his role and his responsibilities, and Anne was awash with shame, because she had forgotten hers.

And he loved her son.

That was what broke her heart. During all those months of watching her husband with her son, of watching him hold the infant in his arms and returning the Dauphin’s smiles with brilliant ones of his own; of watching Louis hold out a hand and laugh when the Dauphin wrapped his short little fingers around his; Louis would kiss his face then, and his kisses were like blessings to the infant’s forehead, and he would whisper words that were meant to pass between father and son. During all those months, she’d never broken. But she did now. She didn’t weep, a Queen didn’t weep in the presence of her court, yet she bled from a wound that was nobody’s fault but her own.

“You will understand, Madame,” Louis said, when they were finally alone, no longer surrounded by musketeers, red guards and a host of grooms and servants. “That now that this matter has been officially resolved, it needs to be resolved in private.” He waved at one of his attendants who scurried over with a glass of wine. Anne was offered none, and she didn’t dare beckon any of her ladies-in-waiting to bring her one. She desperately wished Constance was there with her; that she had an ally to focus on in the sea of indifferent faces. These women didn’t like her, the Spanish queen, and she wondered suddenly ( _and oh, much too late_ ) how much gossip there had been in all those months, ever since she had been brought back, attended only by a group of musketeers. How much gossip there had been in all those months when Aramis used any excuse to be near her chambers. 

And she realised with sudden clarity that no rumours of his affair with Marguerite had ever reached her.

“The paternity of your son is in question,” Louis continued, “you will understand that this is an inacceptable position you put us in.”

Anne’s skin shrunk around her. Louis, seated on his throne while she stood before him like a commoner; Louis, shrouded in full regal majesty, was the sun towards which every face in the room turned. They lowered their eyes, just like they would before the sun, and they bent their heads and feared its glare.

“The child must die,” Louis continued in a level, cold, high-pitched voice. Anne swayed and a hand at her elbow steadied her. “We cannot risk a contamination of the royal bloodline by commoner’s blood. I understand,” he added with all the hauteur at his disposal, and his eyes bored into her very soul, “that the allegations are true?”

Anne opened her mouth and was glad, all of a sudden, that she stood trial alone. That Constance was not there, because Constance was honest and brave, and because Constance was in love. Constance would have betrayed her by a gasp or a glance. She was not like Anne, who could pull the mask over her face and look her husband straight in the eye and say in a voice that did not tremble: “Everything has been said on this matter, Sire. I don’t have anything to add.”

She was not like Aramis, who, by committing perjury, betrayed nothing but his own conscience. She could not lie to her husband, to the man with whom she had shared her life since girlhood; the man who was thoughtless and careless and selfish but never deliberately cruel, and who was now humiliating himself by humiliating her before the eyes of their both attendants.

She couldn’t believe how she could have forgotten ( _ignored, buried in the back of her mind_ ) that Louis was smarter than everyone gave him credit for. She had spent months ignoring ( _fostering, relishing_ ) the estrangement between her and her husband that Rochefort had brought about, because she used it to justify her passion for-

“You can’t,” she said in a clear voice that betrayed nothing. “You cannot mean it, Sire.” She swallowed down fear and tears and added, “You love him.”

“Whether or not we love is immaterial. We must think of France and what’s good for her,” he said, and she felt the irony that it was her husband who was the voice of reason. 

“The child will die. This is what everyone will believe,” he reiterated, and for the first time there was a hitch in his voice that stabbed her just like a dagger would. “And, overcome by grief, you will leave Paris and retire to a convent, for the time being.” 

Anne looked at him. She looked at him for the first time in months, and she realised, much too late, how much he had learned from the Cardinal. 

And when he stepped down from the throne and stood before her, when he took her hands in his and kissed her on the forehead in silent benediction, whispering ‘Farewell’ in a voice meant for her ears only, she realised, much too late, how much he loved her.

He did not kiss her son.

~*~

Here she is now, lying on her bed in the chamber that she shares with Aramis, and she can’t believe her luck. Louis was petty and childish, but he was not vindictive, nor cruel. He kept his promise, he let her go, and she was free to choose the life that she wanted, with the man whom she loves and who loves her back.

Her son is sleeping in his cradle, she can hear him breathe.

Aramis does love her. She can see it in the way he looks at her, in the way he touches her, so reverently and gently still as if he thought she would break. Aramis, who came to her the moment she sent for him.

Aramis, who chose her over the monastery and the musketeers.

Her son’s sleep is troubled now, she can hear it in the way his breathing changes. He makes a small whimpering noise, and she rolls on her side, listening, listening.

“What is it?” Aramis whispers sleepily.

Anne sits up, listening to the sounds from the cradle.

“Come back,” Aramis whispers, and his arm around her waist tightens.

Anne shifts away, ignoring Aramis’ sound of protest, gets up and walks over to the cradle. Her son is asleep, his distress was only in her head. She watches him, and in the light of the moon he looks like an angel, pale and golden and beautiful and so unlike-

Anne wants to go back to bed, because the chamber is cold, the fire died down long ago. The bed is warm, and Aramis is warm, and the moment she’ll get back to bed he will gather her up in his arms and touch her the way only he knows how. She touches a hand to her son’s face, caresses the plump little cheek and watches him sigh in his sleep.

And first and foremost, she listens, listens, listens for the sound of Aramis’ breathing, because once it evens out, she will know that he is asleep, and she will know she can go back to bed then.

Aramis, who is beautiful and charming and gallant and who saved her life on so many occasions, and whom she loves with all her heart. She does love him. She loves him so much that she gave up all that she ever knew, the life she had been brought up to lead, to hide away with him in a forgotten corner of the Normandy. A queen in mourning, retired to a convent after the death of her child; and here she is, living in sin with a man who is so much beneath her in station.

A man who saved her life and gave her the child that she craved, and who loves her with his heart and his soul and his body, and who has fallen back asleep so that she can go back to bed.

“There you are,” Aramis whispers the moment she lies by his side. “Come here.” He wraps an arm around her and pulls her close. “Sleep,” he breathes into her ear.

Anne cannot sleep. It’s too hot, Aramis’ body heat is smothering her, and her blood is restless and boils under her skin. She’s not used to sleeping with another body next to her like this, entwined in a lovers’ embrace. And yet, she doesn’t feel like they were lovers. She wants him to be her lover, because he’s beautiful and he’s charming and he knows how to touch her to make her body sing with a pleasure that she never knew she could experience. But he isn’t. He’s no longer her lover, he’s more than that. More than a lover, less than a husband, and there is no turning back from this.

~*~

The first night they spent together in their new home, he was her lover still. He carried her into the bedchamber that they were to share and laid her on the bed that smelled of lavender. The maid carried her son and put him into his cradle, and then she curtsied and left. Anne was alone with Aramis, and for a moment, she could not breathe, and then he was by her, above her and around her. “I think,” he whispered, smiling against her mouth, “I have found Paradise at last.”

Anne smiled back at the reverence that set his eyes alight, and he kissed her hands and then her mouth. And then her breasts, sliding his tongue over tender skin and swollen flesh, and then her son cried. Aramis raised his head, his eyes black with desire and a flash of teeth between parted lips. Anne glanced down on herself and saw that her breasts were leaking milk, like a commoner’s. She pushed him away and stood up, confused and ashamed and angry. In the palace, wet nurses had taken care of the Dauphin’s primary needs, and her own milk had dried almost instantly after the Dauphin had been born. But here, in her new life, she was a mother, not a queen. 

She flinched when she put the infant to her breast and her son began to suck the flesh that was still moist from her lover’s mouth. Aramis was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read, and she turned away, flushed and angry. Nursing her son was more painful than she’d expected, her breast was oversensitive after Aramis’ touch, and anger bubbled up. When she heard Aramis move, she almost expected him to come and sit by her side. Instead, she heard him walk behind the paravent and use the chamber pot. Her son gurgled and snuffled with his mouth latched to her breast, and then he opened his eyes and looked straight at her, and his clear blue gaze seemed to penetrate the deepest depths of her mind and soul.

The Dauphin ( _no, he was no longer the Dauphin, he was a fatherless infant with no name; her husband was no longer his father and her lover had no name to give him_ ); her son cried the next night, and the next. Aramis would pick him up and carry him around in his arms, singing lullabies in French and Spanish until the cries subsided. Reclining on the bed, she watched Aramis walk around the room with the infant in his arms, and her breasts were swollen and wet with milk that started to flow every time her son cried. The small bedchamber was stuffy with the heat from the fire and with the bodies of three people who slept in it. 

Aramis never complained, and she loved him for it. He was tender and gentle as always, touching her with the same reverence as always, and one day when he came in the room where she was dreaming by the fireplace, he smiled, bowed and addressed her with, “Your Majesty”.

Anne snapped then. Aramis flinched as if she’d struck him, and she snarled at him, hurling words into his face that she could never take back. He let her anger wash over him until there was nothing left, and then he fell down to his knees by her feet and kissed her hands, muttering apologies that she didn’t want to hear.

He fucked her that night, hard and vicious, with one hand buried between their bodies, between her thighs, sending waves and waves of pleasure through her. This, this was it, this was the thing she wanted. And she dared, at last, ask him to show her. To show her how to pleasure him; to show her the bedroom tricks that she knew other women used ( _that Milady had used on her husband_ ), and he laughed, low and delighted, and said that she didn’t need any of that. That she was perfect just the way she was.

“Show me!” Anne said, almost angrily. “Or do you wish to defy your Queen?” The words were out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying, dazed and dizzy with lust as she was.

Aramis’ gaze shifted away from her, and for one moment she caught the glimpse of… something in his dark eyes. But then he rolled on his back, pulling her with him. He took her hand in his, carried it to his lips and licked across her palm. “Like this,” he whispered, wrapping her fingers around his cock. She had touched him there before, but never like this; never in this deliberate manner, guided by his hand that taught her exactly what he liked. Aramis threw his head back, and she watch the tendons and muscles in his neck tense as pleasure rushed through him, 

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Your mouth,” Aramis said without thinking. His eyes snapped open. “I’m sorry, your Majes-” He bit his lip. “Would you?”

When she knelt between his parted legs, a strange sense of power flooded through her. He held his cock in a loose fist and guided it towards her mouth. His other hand was cupping her face. “You don’t have to do this,” he said in one breath when the tip brushed across her mouth, and she felt moisture on her lips. 

Anne opened her mouth and let him slide it in. His cock was heavy on her tongue and much thicker than she’s expected. In her desire to do it right she had overreached herself and found herself choking and gagging. She pulled away, and so did Aramis. “Sorry!” he was saying, “sorry, sorry, forgive me.”

“Let me try again,” Anne said. It had been a singularly unpleasant experience, but she had to learn it. Aramis was always so giving, touching her everywhere with his hands and his mouth; unveiling the secrets of her own body to her. And when he would finally sink into her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, in her hair, it was only after he’d rendered her body pliant and open. Each push of his hips would send shivers of pleasure all the way up to the tip of her head and all the way down to her toes.

She lowered her head and took his cock in her mouth again. This time, she was prepared for its bulk, and she didn’t choke. Aramis muttered something that she couldn’t hear through the rush of blood in her ears. But then, a whimper, a piercing cry, and her son was crying again, woken, perhaps, by the noises she and her lover were making.

Aramis was sitting up even before she fully realised what was going on. His cock slipped from her mouth and Anne herself dribble and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before Aramis could see it. But he wasn’t paying any attention to her.

“What are you doing?” she said, angry and humiliated.

“Singing our son to sleep.” He stood by the cradle and was lifting the child gently.

“He is my son.” Crouching naked on the bed, Anne pulled herself up to her full regal height. 

Aramis glanced up at her. “Of course,” he said.

She stretched out her arms, and he came over obediently and handed her the child. Her breasts were leaking again and she guided her swollen nipple into his mouth. Aramis sat on the edge of the bed and watched her nurse her son, and Anne tugged at the duvet with one hand in an attempt to pull it over her shoulders to shield her body from view. Aramis leaned in and tucked her in so that her body was covered and her child’s head remained free. Her gaze fell on his crotch, and she saw that he was going soft already, unspent.

~*~

“Sleep,” Aramis is muttering now with his mouth in her hair. “You need to sleep if you want to get out of bed tomorrow.”

“What for?” Anne blurts out. The days here are short and gloomy. The peasants hide away in their houses, sleeping the dark season away, and Anne feels like doing the same. This is not like Paris, there are no diversions, no people, no light, no arts. There is the stygian sky and the roaring sea, and the space between them is filled with wind and rain.

Aramis hesitates for a fraction of a second. “Or we can stay in bed,” he says with that seductive purr in the back of his throat. Anne forces her face to smile. Staying in bed with Aramis, who is beautiful and charming and loves her so much, is something that she was dreaming of for so long. The dreams that filled her cold nights have been replaced by reality, and reality is so much better. She tightens the grip of her hand around his wrist and drags her nails lightly over the back of his hand. Aramis complies instantly. He always does. He pushes the hair at the back of her neck up and kisses her nape, sending shivers down her spine. “Turn around,” he mouths into her skin.

“No,” Anne shakes her head and tugs at his wrist, motioning his hand away from her breasts and further down. “Like this.”

Aramis is kissing her neck, caressing her skin with his mouth and tongue and beard, and he is pulling her chemise up, up, over her knees and thighs and hips, and Anne pushes back against him and presses her whole body into his. This is so, so good, this is what she wanted, and his hand is between her legs now, and sparks of intense pleasure are already shooting into her stomach and loins.

The insides of her thighs are drenched when she comes, and his cock is sliding between them and then up and into her. Aramis is panting, softly, because he is always careful not to disturb her son’s sleep, and he thrusts into her from behind. They rock into each other, and then his hand on her hips tightens and he raises himself on his elbow and rolls them both until she comes to lie on her front. “All right?” he asks, stroking her hair with gentle fingers.

Anne grits her teeth and nods. His cock is so deep inside her she can feel the throb of his pulse fill her entire body, and her own body clenches around him with unbridled lust. She is the daughter of the House of Habsburg, the Queen of France, and she’s being fucked from behind by a commoner. Her body is no longer that of a queen. All they do in this house is eat, sleep and fuck, and she is bringing up her child on her own milk like a peasant girl.

~*~

“You could get a wet-nurse if you like,” Aramis said one day when he walked in on her nursing her son with tears in her eyes, because her nipples were rubbed raw and hurt at the slightest touch. The maid had once had the cheek to bring her a salve meant to soothe the inflamed skin, and Anne had flown into a passion and thrown it into the woman’s face. It was the first time she’d ever physically chastised a servant. She could not bear the humiliation. She, the Queen of France, and that peasant halfwit wanted to treat her with udder ointment as if she was a dairy cow.

Anne clenched her teeth. “No. I am not getting a wet-nurse,” she said, pushing down on the pain. Aramis inclined his head in acquiescence and sat down on a stool by her feet. He reached out and touched her son’s hand with a finger.

“He is getting stronger by the day,” he said, smiling up at her with his eyes.

“Like his father,” she said automatically. But it wasn’t true, and she knew it.

She wasn’t quite sure what Aramis did all day. He loved the little house by the shore when he first arrived; he loved the endless sky and the endless sea. He went out riding by the shore and when he came back he smelled of salt and freedom. It was in a moment like that, when he had just arrived back from one of his jaunts, that she asked him why he had chosen to become a musketeer.

“Because I enjoy killing,” he said, and then he frowned and laughed, as if to retract the words.

Anne knows. She knows that he enjoys it, she saw the wild, the primal pleasure on his face and in every line of his body when he was killing men on her behalf. She saw him commit treason, perjury and murder, and it was all for her. She wonders what else she could make him do.

She hasn’t seen that wild, primal pleasure in a long time. Aramis no longer smells of blood, fury and gunpowder. He smells of sweat, and of baby. He paces to and fro through their bedchamber every night with her son in his arms, singing him to sleep, and when he finally crawls into bed, the scent of the infant clings to him. 

Anne doesn’t want to get a wet-nurse. A wet-nurse would be a young woman, a woman who had had congress with men, and she doesn’t want one of them in her house. For weeks, if not months, Aramis was having an affair with her son’s nanny, right under her nose, and she never knew. She will endure the pain rather than the humiliation. Aramis doesn’t let her feel his dark passions, but she knows they are still there; dormant perhaps, but not quenched. With her, he is uniformly patient and tender and gentle, and she wonders sometimes what he does to feed his dark desires. 

She trusts Aramis, trusts him with her life, but she senses a hunger in him that she can’t satisfy. She had chosen a maid who is middle-aged, ugly and dim-witted. She trusts his taste for elegance and beauty more than she trusts his love for her.

She wonders if his dark desires extend to the bedroom. If there is something that she doesn’t know about, something that he has never told her, will never tell her, because to him she is purity and salvation and he looks up to her as if to the Virgin Mother.

~*~

When the letter from her husband comes, Anne is almost relieved. They are to meet in the convent in which she supposedly lives. She doesn’t want Aramis to accompany her there, but he insists. It is the first time that he doesn’t quietly comply with her wishes; he argues his point and she is so surprised and intrigued that she gives in.

Aramis gets her safely to the convent, but the court arrives before he can leave. She knows instantly after a glance at her husband’s face that there is nothing she can do. They seize Aramis and drag him into the centre of the courtyard. Force him down to his knees and strip him, and there’s laughter as he struggles and fights and curses them in French and Spanish.

He stills the moment his eyes meet hers. She is made to stand with the nuns, and their hands are gentle vices around her upper arms. They cannot harm her, she is Queen still, she is the King’s consort. But they can make her watch.

Aramis is quite still. She has never seen him like that, never like that, on his knees, exposed and vulnerable. He raises his eyes to her in silent prayer, and she doesn’t dare look away. She doesn’t look away when the first lash lands on his back, a cruel whizzing through the air and a sharp sting that she feels on her own skin. 

His eyes are open and fixed on her when the next lash cuts into him. She can see exactly when he begins to pant even though she can’t hear it over the noise of the crowd. The courtiers enjoy the sight of a man being flogged, and it strikes Anne of a sudden that there is a beauty to it. Aramis is gasping for air, and his face and chest are glistening with sweat. Heat and sweat are steaming off him, and she can see the dark passion solidify around him like a dark halo. He’s like a demon, whose feral, dangerous nature is tamed within these sacred walls. He throws himself into his humiliation just like she throws herself into hers.

The next lash makes him groan, loud enough to be heard. The court goes quiet: this is where it gets interesting. Aramis groans again, louder, and his head rolls back. He lifts his eyes to Heavens and his lips move in silent prayer. His entire body jolts forward on the next lash, the seventh one, and Anne wonders if they’ve already drawn blood. She catches herself sniffing the air like an animal, in an attempt to catch that scent of passion and violence that used to cling to Aramis when she first knew him. Dust settles on his bare skin and mingles with sweat in a layer of filth. Aramis groans again and falls forward, his body pliant like a ragdoll at last. They let him drop to the ground and turn away. The crowd moves and disperses, and Anne remains rooted to the spot. She does not run to her lover. She watches him across the distance of the courtyard like she used to watch him for all those months. Lying on the ground with blood trickling from his wounds, sacrificing his body to protect her, Aramis again is the man she fell in love with.


End file.
